Brutal Murder Investigation: Forensic Evidence Solves the Case

Denise O'Neal, a vibrant traveler and waitress, was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered by her neighbor and two accomplices.

### The Kidnapping and Murder of Denise O'Neal: A Forensic Investigation
* 🔎 28-year-old Denise O'Neal went missing after missing two consecutive days of work, and her body was later found in a **canal**.
* 🚗 The sand found in Denise's car matched the sand near her body, indicating that the car was **used to transport her**.
* ☎ A neighbor's 911 call led to the discovery of Denise's body, which had been **bound, strangled, and sexually assaulted**.
* 👥 Denise's neighbor, Lis Cabalero, and his friend, Isaac Brown, were the **prime suspects** in her abduction and murder.
* 📺 Both men were captured on surveillance footage having breakfast together just **hours after disposing of Denise's body**.
* 🔒 Cabalero initially denied involvement but changed his story when confronted with evidence such as **Denise's gym membership card in his apartment** and **his fingerprints in her car**.
* Only Cabalero was tied to the sexual assault through **DNA evidence**, and he was ultimately convicted of **kidnapping and murder**, receiving a **death sentence**.
* ⚖ Brown was convicted of multiple charges, including **second-degree murder**, while another accomplice, Robert Messer, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to **15 years in prison**.

[Music] Up next, a young woman's missing and someone has stolen her identity. No one saw her leave, no one saw her arrive back at her apartment. But who wanted to harm her? She had received some harassing phone calls prior to her being reported missing. Eventually, the forensic evidence provided those answers. Everybody in their brother was trying to make a deal with the devil. Let he who has no sin cast the first stone. Let me tell you, I'd have no problem casting all the [Music] stones. Life was an adventure for 28-year-old Denise O'Neal. It was no trip she wouldn't take, virtually no activity she wouldn't try. She always loved to travel, always either swimming or having a game of tennis or scuba diving, going to museums and the Arts, of course, anything in the art she loved. She just loved life. She really loved [Music] life. After graduating from college, Denise took a job as a waitress in Palm Beach, Florida while she looked for a job teaching English. She knew the restaurant business from A to Z and certainly made

very good money so why not. Denise was a punctual employee, but after missing two consecutive days of work without calling in, her manager grew alarmed. Denise had been employed at this restaurant for 2 and A2 years and had never missed a day of work at all. Her employer notified the police department, and they began a missing person's investigation. Police went to Denise's apartment; her car was missing, but there were no signs of a break-in. Her apartment was extremely neat in order; nothing seemed to be in disarray. They also checked the phone answering machine, which provided a clue. There was an early alert from a credit card company saying there was some unusual spending on one of her cards. Later that afternoon, police found Ana's car in a parking lot across the street from her apartment. They immediately felt that someone else must have been in the car because uh Miss O'Neal was a very, very uh vidious person, and the car was just the opposite. A pink jacket belonging to Denise was on the

back seat. Two soda bottles were on the floor. There was a cigarette butt on the floor of the driver's side of the car, and mral didn't smoke. I noticed that there was white sand on the right rear floor mat. We had sand on the driver's side and a small amount in the passenger side. In Florida, sand is quite common, but not this kind of sand. It wasn't beach sand. It wasn't black mud. It wasn't coarse brown sand. It was unique. It was consistent with Limestone. Police dusted the entire car inside and out for fingerprints. We found over 20 prins in total. They were all over the car. They were on the inside. They were on the trunk. They were on the outside of the vehicle. On the day Denise went missing, her credit card revealed she bought a pair of women's sneakers at 2:30 in the afternoon but failed to show up for work at 5:30. So somewhere in between that window, something must have happened to her. This was one of the best pieces of evidence.

for the police, 'cause it gave them a time frame. No one at Denise's apartment had seen or heard anything suspicious, but then a chilling call came in to 911. Do you have emergency, uh, apparently there's a body in the canal right by our house, by the house where I'm at. What kind of body? A human body. The body was very visible to the neighbor. It looked like it had been wrapped up in some large pink sheet. Dental records confirmed the victim was Denise O'Neal. The body was bound; her hands and feet were tied up with several implements: shoestrings, a dog leash, a multicolor dog leash. We were numb for like days. We knew we had to bury her and we walking up, um, Palm Beach Boulevard. It was so hot and we were freezing. We were so cold and yet it was hot and you think you're dreaming. You think you're going to wake up, but you're not waking up. All the horror, the fear that that poor girl went through prior to her death, the total disregard for human life, it puts a

lot of pressure on police to come up with a murderer cuz you know people feel like you know this could happen again to any one of us. The medical examiner determined that the cause of Denise O'Neal's death was asphixiation. She'd been strangled to [Music] death. They also found evidence of sexual assault. When the swab from the victim was analyzed in the DNA section, a male profile was de veloped. Investigators were puzzled by the two electrical cords used to tie the sheet around Denise's body. These objects I've never seen before. I was very suspicious as to what they even were. I had no idea. Research identified them as heat rocks. A heat rock is a pretty simple device. It's a fake rock that gets heated up by electricity, and people use it to warm cold-blooded animals like a pet snake. Investigators also found some unusual black hairs on the bed sheet. Microscopic analysis showed these were dog hairs. My killer is going to own a black dog. My killer is also going to own a reptile.

whether it be a snake or a lizard, my killer is also going to have some type of association with a size 36 belt because it's a size belt that we found wrapped around Denise's body. The sand found in Denise's car was similar to the sand in the area near her body, proof Denise's car had been used to transport her body. Investigators knew that Denise had been abducted sometime between 2:30 and 5:30 on the day she disappeared. Her neighbors said they didn't see or hear anything suspicious, not know what happened, strange, no clue. Later that same day, someone used Denise's ATM card to withdraw $700 from her checking account. The working assumption at this point for the cops was that whoever used that ATM card probably killed Denise O'Neal. Unfortunately, the surveillance camera at the ATM wasn't functioning properly, so it was impossible to tell who made the withdrawal. Then investigators noticed something on the local newscasts: this man, one of Denise's neighbors, kept turning up in various news stories about her.

disappearance. This behavior really struck police as odd because he wanted to be in front of the camera, and he wanted to be interviewed. In an interview given before Denise's body was found, he made a surprising reference. She's very quiet, yeah. I try saying hi there sometimes. She just don't say nothing, so we always kept to herself. What was most interesting was that he referred to Denise in the past tense. She's very quiet, yeah. His name was LS Cabalero, and he was Denise's next-door neighbor. He was unemployed, but when police went to interview Cabalero, he wasn't home. I happened to knock on door 737, which was right across the hall, call from her apartment of 738. While knocking on the door, I heard a dog bark through a window. Investigators saw the dog and its coloring. Seeing a black chat with my own eyes, the hair on the back of our necks stood up. Detectives asked another neighbor about Calero. The guy said the only guy I know is the guy, and he pointed up the

guy that lives up there there you know, the guy with the uh, the chow and the boa constrictor said wow wow. In the search for Denise O'Neal's killer, investigators Prime Suspect lived just a few feet away from Denise's apartment. It was her neighbor Lis Cabalero. When we first walked up on Cabalero, he told us he didn't say it directly but told us he really didn't like Denise. He described her as being snooty. Cabalero denied any involvement in Denise's murder and said he had no relationship with her other than to say hello. We discovered that Mr. Cabalero was in serious financial trouble. He had a phone bill of $6,000 from phone sex lines that he had been calling, that he was behind in his rent, and that he could be evicted at any time. Detective IV obtained a search warrant for Cabalero's apartment. What struck me immediately was the large amount of pornography inside the closet. The type of pornography that was there dealt with a lot of violence.

it was real, real sick stuff. We did not find Denise O'Neal's fingerprints inside Calero's apartment, but they did discover other clues. I walked into the actual bedroom area, and as I started to turn to the left, I observed what appeared to be, and thought was, a fish aquarium. They found impressions at the bottom of the tank, and it looked like they might be where the heat rocks had been. A pair of heat rocks and the electrical cords were wrapped around Denise's body. Police also found a pair of black men's sneakers in Cabalo's closet. They didn't have any shoelaces in them. Miss O'Neal had been bound with black-colored shoelaces. There was also a reddish-brown stain on the bedroom carpet that might be blood. To be sure, investigators turned out the lights and sprayed the stain with luminol. Three very distinct blood stains emerged. It appeared to be consistent with the outline of the buttocks area of a human being. Also in Cabalero's bedroom, investigators found several other

important items. We found a pair of scissors and trapped within the hinge of the scissors appeared to be blue-colored fibers. We knew that Miss O'Neal had been wearing a blue-colored garment that had been cut. Caballero maintained Denise had never been inside his apartment, but under a cardboard box, investigators found a gym membership card. And when I picked it up and turned it over, and it had Denise O'Neal's name on it, I was ecstatic. I didn't know her, he says in front of the cameras. Well, I've got you now because she's dead, and her card is inside your house. Detectives believe this clue was left at the scene by a desperate Denise O'Neal. I can't prove it, but I'll always say that she put that card there. That's the way it hit me. My first question was, Have you ever detailed Denise's vehicle? Louis Caballo's response was he's never been in her car or never detailed her car, but analysts found Caballo's prints inside Denise's car. When faced with this evidence.

cabalero changed his story. He now claimed he was an unwitting accomplice. He said the real killer was his friend, 19-year-old Isaac Brown. So Isaac approaches her and friends her in the hallway. Uh, yes, he approached her. He DED her from behind as she was going into her door. So now she's into your apartment? Yes, Isaac has her on the belly and U I'm a little bit hysterical. I never thought it was going to happen. Brown, who had no criminal record, also confessed but said the killer was cabalero who was broke and desperate for money. Brown said cabalero had been planning to Rob Denise for months. There was just loose talk from cabalero saying, 'That man, I need, I need to come up. I need to hit somebody. I need some money right now and only person I can think of that's got some money right now is right there,' and he'd always point across the hallway. Everybody and their brother was trying to make a deal with the devil.

words every bad guy in this case was wanting to confess and plead out, but get the best deal they could. Brown's prints were found on a soda bottle in Denise's car, proof he was involved. Despite Brown and Calero's conflicting versions of what happened, their stories were identical on one count: they had breakfast together just hours after dumping Denise's body in the canal. They went to an IHOP restaurant off a Commercial Boulevard in 441 in the city of Tamarak. Investigators tracked down the receipt for that meal. When it asked for the waitress to enter how many customers were present, it didn't say two customers, it said three customers. This explained why the 36-inch belt used to wrap Denise's body didn't fit Calero or Brown, and why the shoes without the shoelaces in Capo's apartment also didn't fit either one as well. That led me to believe very strongly that I had a third killer, that I had a third individual involved with the murder of Denise O'Neal. But if there were a third

perpetrator leis calero and Isaac Brown weren't talking. [Music] Investigators now had two men in custody for the abduction and murder of Denise O'Neal. Leis cavalero and Isaac Brown, not surprisingly, each man identified the other as the killer. Complicating things further, investigators discovered that a third man was with cabalero and brown on the morning they disposed of the body. It is absolutely shocking. The defense now can say the real culprit is out there. The real culprit is the person who you have in charge. But who was this third man? When police did a background check on Lewis cabalero, they learned he'd been arrested a month earlier for car theft, and he had an accomplice. He was with an acquaintance of his, Robert Messer. 20-year-old Robert messer's fingerprints were on file. Voila, lo and behold, there was Mr. Mes uh print on some of the items in the trunk of Denise O'Neal's car. When police arrested Messer, he too denied any

involvement in the murder. Robert Mess told me, I didn't kill her. How dare you tell me that I'm the killer. I'll tell you what happened. I was there. Messer said he did nothing, but that Cabalero and Brown were both involved. Messer said he was in Cabalero's living room when Cabalero and Brown raped and murdered Denise O'Neal in the bedroom. I sat there with my fingers in my ears, and the TV was up loud. I can barely hear the TV now, but I heard her screams. I heard her screaming. All three men were charged with first-degree murder, but when DNA results came back, only one of the three, Leis Capero, was tied to the sexual assault. Based on the forensic evidence and witness interrogations, investigators believe Cabalero planned the attack on an afternoon when Denise was doing her laundry. When no one was around, he grabbed her and forced her into his apartment, and with Isaac Brown's help.

gagged and tied her up. He took her ATM card and forced her to divulge her pin number. Calero then left to get some money and on the way back picked up Robert Messer. Isaac Brown stayed behind. At some point, Denise was able to remove her gym membership card and hide it underneath a cardboard box, leaving proof that she had been in Cabalo's apartment. When Cabalero returned with Messer, he sexually assaulted her, then used electrical cords from the heat rocks to strangle her to death. The trio wrapped Denise's body in the sheet using the belt, shoelaces, and the electrical cords. They used Denise's car to drive to the canal where they dumped her body. They tracked sand into the car and left their fingerprints behind. Later, the three went to breakfast. They were absolute barbarians. They should have been burned alive, all three of them. And I make no bones about it. And they say, Don't let he who has no sin cast the first stone. Let me tell you, I'd have no problem casting all the

stones. Robert Messer was tried and convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years. Isaac Brown was convicted of five counts, including second-degree murder. Chances are this is where I'll die in prison. I don't want for someone else to have to go through what I'm doing when all they could do is just make better choices than who they call friends, make better choices, and you know how they follow their morals. Lis Cabalero was convicted of kidnapping and murder, and he now sits on death row. I thanked God for forensic signs and thank God for the men and women who donate their time to study it, to bring to Justice these monsters. I am very grateful for forensic science. Denise O'Neal is one of a few victims that I've encountered through my tenure with this agency that have affected me. I still think about Denise. I still think about her family. [Music]

Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 49 - Pet Rock - Full Episode

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FilmRise True Crime

The Mysterious Disappearance of Denise O'Neal

Denise O'Neal, a adventurous and loving life, went missing after receiving harassing phone calls and missing work for the first time in 22 years.

Her car was found with unusual items and fingerprints, as well as a purchase on her credit card before she disappeared.

The discovery of unique sand and multiple fingerprints in her car provided crucial evidence in the investigation of her disappearance.

Denise O'Neal was found bound, strangled, and sexually assaulted, putting pressure on the police to find the killer.

The investigation revealed unique clues about the suspect, including the use of heat rocks, black dog hairs, and a size 36 belt.

The discovery of her body's transport in her own car and the use of her ATM card pointed to a possible suspect, who was also frequently featured in news stories about the victim.

Suspicious Behavior and Disturbing Evidence: The Case of Denise O'Neal's Neighbor

Denise O'Neal's neighbor, LS Cabalero, exhibited strange behavior and referred to her in the past tense before her body was found.

He had a history of financial trouble and a disturbing collection of pornography in his apartment.

The police found evidence including impressions in a fish tank, heat rocks, and black sneakers that linked Cabalero to the crime.

Evidence in the Denise O'Neal Murder Case

Blue fibers from a cut garment and Denise's gym card were found in Louis Caballero's apartment, contradicting his claims of not knowing her.

Caballero's fingerprints were discovered in Denise's car, and he later changed his story to blame his friend, Isaac Brown, who also confessed to the crime.

Despite their conflicting accounts, both men were linked to the murder through evidence, and a third unidentified individual was believed to be involved, as indicated by a restaurant receipt.

The Murder of Denise O'Neal: A Twisted Tale of Accusations

Two men, Leis Calero and Isaac Brown, were in custody for the abduction and murder of Denise O'Neal, each blaming the other for the killing.

However, a third man, Robert Messer, was also involved in disposing of the body, with his fingerprints found in the victim's car.

While all three men were charged with first-degree murder, only Calero was tied to the sexual assault through DNA evidence, suggesting he had planned the attack with Brown's help.

Denise O'Neal was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered by Lis Cabalero and two accomplices.

The perpetrators used her car to dispose of her body and left incriminating evidence behind.

Cabalero was convicted of kidnapping and murder and is currently on death row, while the others received lengthy prison sentences.